These lines hardly illustrate, I think, the particular form of Mr.
Pitt's criticism, for a quick succession of fine shades of feeling of
this kind could never have been delineated in a painting, or indeed in
a series of paintings, at all, while they _are_ so given in the poem.
But the praise itself, if not its exact form, is amply deserved. The
singular depth of the romantic glow in this passage, and its equally
singular simplicity,--a simplicity which makes it intelligible to
every one,--are conspicuous to every reader. It is not what is called
classical poetry, for there is no severe outline,--no sculptured
completeness and repose,--no satisfying wholeness of effect to the eye
of the mind,--no embodiment of a great action. The poet gives us a
breath, a ripple of alternating fear and hope in the heart of an old
man, and that is all. He catches an emotion that had its roots deep in
the past, and that is striving onward towards something in the
future;--he traces the wistfulness and self-distrust with which age
seeks to recover the feelings of youth,--the delight with which it
greets them when they come,--the hesitation and diffidence with which
it recalls them as they pass away, and questions the triumph it has
just won,--and he paints all this without subtlety, without
complexity, but with a swiftness such as few poets ever surpassed.
Generally, however, Scott prefers action itself for his subject, to
any feeling, however active in its bent. The cases in which he makes a
study of any mood of feeling, as he does of this harper's feeling, are
comparatively rare. Deloraine's night-ride to Melrose is a good deal
more in Scott's ordinary way, than this study of the old harper's
wistful mood. But whatever his subject, his treatment of it is the
same. His lines are always strongly drawn; his handling is always
simple; and his subject always romantic. But though romantic, it is
simple almost to bareness,--one of the great causes both of his